themselves had that
worn and pale look which characterizes the class to which they belong,
and their pallor was not diminished by their wearing of the long beard
and mustache. Their unbuttoned shirts and bare breasts, the short clay
pipe, reminded me of the heroes of the barricades; indeed, I have every
reason to know that these very compositors are generally foremost in
revolutions; and though they often print ministerial articles, they are
not sharers in the opinions which they help to spread. The head printer
contracts for the printing, and chooses his men where he can find them
best. As a body, these men were provident, I was told, and all
subscribed to a fund for their poor, their orphans and widows; they form
a sort of trade union, and have very strict regulations.

I found a most remarkable want of convenience in the working of the
types. For instance, there were no galleys, or longtitudinal trays, on
which to place the type when it was set up; but when a small quantity
had been put together in column on a broad copper table, a string was
passed round it to keep it together. Nor was there any hand-press for
taking proofs; and here I found the explanation of the extraordinary
appearance of the proofs I had seen below. For when I asked to have one
struck off, the head printer placed a sheet of paper over the type, and
with a great brush beat it in, giving the proof a sunken and embossed
appearance, which it seemed to me would render correction exceedingly
difficult. The French, it seems, care not for improvement in this
respect, any more than the Chinese, whom the brush has served in place
of a printing-press for some three thousand years.

This journal has, as I have said, from 40,000 to 50,000 subscribers, in
order to serve whom it was necessary that the presses should be at work
as early as eleven o'clock at night. But there is no difficulty in doing
this, where news not being the _sine qua non_ of journalism, provincial
and foreign intelligence is give as fresh, which in England would be
considered much behind in time. But even when commencing business at the
early hour above mentioned, I found that it had been necessary for the
paper to be composed twice over, in order to save time; and thus two
printers' establishments were required to bring out each number of the
journal in sufficient time for the country circulation by early morning
trains. The necessity for this double composition is still existing in
mo